Google Search Stays 65% Course, Bing Closes on Yahoo

Google's U.S. search share through October hit 65.6 percent, up a tad from September, says comScore. Yahoo dipped as Bing gained on its search partner.

Google's
(NASDAQ:GOOG) search market share rose slightly to 65.6 percent in the U.S. through October,
from 65.3 percent through September (NASDAQ: SCOR), according to new research from comScore.
The search leader
grew share a tad, two months after falling to 64.8 percent in August, which was
its lowest since September 2009. Google has consistently blanketed the 65
percent search share market for a few years, one reason it is under antitrust
scrutiny by the Justice Department.

Yahoo's
(NASDAQ:YHOO) share fell to 15.2 percent for the month from 15.5 percent,
marking a new low for the embattled Internet company, which just made a big bet
on its Livestand magazine and IntoNow TV applications for Apple's
iPad tablet.

Microsoft
(NASDAQ:MSFT) Bing, which powers Yahoo on the back end, edged up to 14.8
percent share, from 14.7 percent through September. At this pace, Bing should
pass Yahoo in early 2012. Either way, Bing currently drives 30 percent of
search engine results, or less than half as much as Google enjoys.
Google has
made a couple of improvements to its search engine in the last 30 days.
In October,
the company began redirecting most users signed into their Google accounts
to the HTTPS version of Google.com, which encrypts search queries and results.
With search
becoming more personalized-that is, tailored to specific users' preferences based
on their previous searches-Google said it has become more important to shore up
search results directed to users.
Google earlier this month tweaked its algorithm
to bring more freshness to 35 percent of search results, including for hot topics
and recurring events.
The move is
aimed at helping Google better compete with some of the fresher content pouring
throughout Facebook and Twitter.